German Coastguard

Berlitz, the market leader in travel and language-related products asked Mindshare Norway to air a film only once on TV. We had other ideas and used the film as a small viral to produce big results.

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Destination

The 'German Coastguard' film was originally produced for Berlitz (by creative agency B_T_S United) to include in a showreel and to air on TV for advertising competition purposes.

Berlitz asked us to run it once on TV to meet these competition requirements.

Platform

We saw the opportunity in this film and realised it could be very valuable if used as a viral campaign.

Design and Delivery

We set up a server for streaming the video and 200 e-mails containing links were sent out to contacts.

Evaluation

  • The server broke down within 48 hours due to heavy traffic (+250.000)
  • Searching for "Berlitz" on Google increased by 52% and "German Coastguard" now generates more than 1,7 million hits on Google.
  • It's been viewed over 2 million times on sites like youtube.com, video.google.com and stupidvideos.com.
  • Tracking shows that more than 40 million people have seen it.
  • Research shows that had Berlitz invested the same amount in traditional media; awareness, knowledge and perception of Berlitz would have been no where near as effective as this small viral.

Context

As late as the mid-17th century, the French wine makers did not use corks. Instead, they used oil-soaked rags stuffed into the necks of bottles.

Region : Europe

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Media : Online Digital

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Sector : Travel

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Sector : Education

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